Part 1: Monogamy is a Patriarchal Myth (& Other Things Your Parents Probably Never Taught You)

“There’s no denying that we’re a species with a sweet tooth for sex.” -Christopher Ryan

Ask anyone who’s married or in a relationship of more than a few years: long-term commitment is HARD. Lately a few of my married friends have admitted that they’re feeling attracted to men who aren’t their husbands, and the guilt is just crushing them. It got me thinking: what makes lust for others start and what (if anything) makes it stop?

Attraction is a force nearly impossible to describe; only poets do it justice. We feel it; we don’t spend time analyzing it. And yet so many of us end up in sexless marriages or long-term relationships that deaden over time. Some get the two-year itch, the five-year itch, and the seven-year itch. But damn it – it’s quite an itch, and not scratching it can lead to frustration, projection, and depression. Also, divorce.

Here’s one answer: we’re not meant to mate for life according to a growing array of scholarship, including the seminal (no pun intended) Sex At Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha. The authors are a married couple, but that’s by far not the most fascinating thing about the book. The super-micro version of their thesis is that in terms of human history, we just invented monogamy like, five minutes ago – because we went from hunter-gathers to landowners. Before that, we lived communally – children were raised by the clan.

After the advent of agriculture, men realized that they had to know the paternity of their children, to pass on property rights. Thus, monogamy was born a mere 8000 years ago. (Romantic love came way after this – the concept was invented in the 17th century. Up ‘til then, marriage was a merely a business contract.)

So monogamy is a cultural myth, and yet so many of us fundamentally believe in “til death do us part.” Forget about applying a magical self-help fix here; it’s going to take some major consciousness-raising to wrap our brains around these conundrums.

Getting It Right the First Time

Some of us marry people we’re not sexually compatible with because we don’t value our own sexual needs enough; even “liberated” women who have lots of sex before marriage. We buy into the heterosexist view that women must partner up with strong providers, ones that will make good dads, etc. (And some of us need to admit that we’re dealing with massive father complexes.) We’re unconsciously parroting evolutionary psychology’s conventional view: women are meant to be monogamous, bring up the babes, and thus propagate the species, while men are meant to spread their seed. The underlying assumption is that women aren’t really into sex – we value motherhood and shopping more.

Let’s get something straight: women are programmed for pleasure. It’s just society’s built-in misogyny that throws a wrench in biology’s plan for us. We’re not taught to value our bodies, our sexuality, and our desire enough. But no matter how important it is to honor pleasure, expecting hot sex to be the only foundation for a relationship is rather ridiculous. You can’t always build authentic intimacy with someone you’re desperately chemically attracted to.

Often the one you lust for will not be the one you want to have a conversation with in the morning. (And sometimes, off the charts one-night-stands turn into long-term relationships. There’s no map for this stuff; life is messy and unpredictable.) When we know the difference between love and lust and find someone that stimulates both mind and genitals it’s all kinds of magical, but this confluence can feel as rare as a finding a peacock on your fire escape.

This is why so many of us end up with “good men” who don’t know how to properly please us. (Remember that oxytocin released at climax, is the same hormone that floods your body to make you forget the vicious pain of childbirth. It also apparently makes you forget when a guy is great in bed but a douchebag the rest of the time.) Theory: if we can get rid of the Madonna/Whore complex, maybe we can kill off the “boring but good man/sexy bad boy” complex, too.

Stay tuned for part 2 of this story next week…

Stefanie Iris Weiss is the author of Eco-Sex: Go Green Between the Sheets and Make Your Love Life Sustainable (Ten Speed Press/Crown Publishing, 2010) and eight other books. Stefanie keeps her carbon footprint small in New York City, where she writes about sustainability, sexuality, reproductive rights, dating and relationships, politics, fashion, beauty, and more for many publications. Learn more about her at ecosex.net, follow her eco-sex exploits on Twitter or join her on Facebook.

Stefanie Iris Weiss is the author of nine books, including her latest title–Eco-Sex: Go Green Between the Sheets and Make Your Love Life Sustainable (Crown Publishing/Ten Speed Press, 2010). She keeps her carbon footprint small in New York City, where she writes about sustainability, sexuality, reproductive rights, dating and relationships, politics, fashion, beauty, and more. Stefanie is a regular contributor to British Elle, and has written for Above Magazine, Nerve, The Daily Green, Marie Claire, EcoSalon and Teen Vogue, to name a few. Her HuffPost blog is sometimes controversial. Stefanie is an on-and-off adjunct professor when not busy writing and teaching about sustainable love.
A vegetarian and eco-activist since her teen years, Stefanie has made her passion into her work, and she wouldn't want it any other way. She believes that life is always better when there's more pleasure, and sustainable satisfaction is the best kind. Learn more about her various projects at ecosex.net and follow her on Twitter: @ecosexuality.

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